Category: Food

The great croissant challenge

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I was craving croissants.

I really wanted to eat something buttery, crunchy, and flaky. And yet, most croissants that I have found, while delicious, fall short of that description. So I decided to try to make my own!

Now croissants are crazy flaky because they’re made out of puff pastry, which is basically flour and a LOT of butter folded over and over and over onto itself to make those layers we so appreciate. You can buy puff pastry at the store but I wanted to make my own. It takes a while because you have to keep the butter cold. So a typical recipe has you do a fold, then put the dough in the fridge for 30 min to an hour to chill the butter before you fold it again. It’s a lot of waiting. I decided the weekend would be the best time to try it.

Cobalt and I have Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything book so I decided to start there. I spent Saturday evening rolling and folding the dough, as per Bittman’s suggestions. Then I put it in the fridge overnight so I could make toasty croissants for Sunday morning brunch.

On Sunday, I rolled out and shaped the croissants. They looked good. Check it out.

Then I popped them in the oven. After about 25 minutes, they looked golden brown and pretty.


Though they looked pretty, they felt kind of weird. They were heavier than I thought a croissant should be. Could be okay still though. It came down to a taste test.

The inside was a disaster. They were still raw in there! I wonder if I made them too big. But also, they didn’t really taste great.

I went on a mission for a new croissant recipe. And I found this one by The Great British Bake Off’s judge Paul Hollywood.

So I went to the store and gathered some more supplies (these things need a lot of butter). And then I started on the recipe.

Hollywood’s recipe has yeast in it, which I took to be a good sign. Croissants that have risen maybe wouldn’t be as dense as the Bittman ones were.

This recipe was a little more complicated than the Bittman one. First of all, the ingredients were listed in grams instead of our American cups and teaspoons. But that’s okay! I have a kitchen scale. I pretended I was back in the lab: I tared the scale and then weighed out the exact amounts of my ingredients.

The recipe also called for “caster sugar,” which is apparently superfine sugar. Our store had sugar and powdered sugar (which is superfine sugar with cornstarch in it), so I had to make my own caster sugar. I took regular sugar and put it in the food processor. Voila. Superfine!

Then all of Hollywood’s measurements were in centimeters instead of inches. I’m not great at guestimating centimeters, so I borrowed my measuring tape from my sewing kit.

Finally, I had some drama getting the butter the way Hollywood described it. But at last I got the dough to its stopping point and let it rest overnight in the fridge.

On Monday morning, I rolled out the dough and shaped the croissants. Not bad!

You can already see the layers!

These ones were smaller than the Bittman ones but they also had a two-hour rise before I baked them. They puffed up!

And then they puffed up even more even more in the oven. Oh man. They looked and smelled so good. Plus they were light and super flaky!

Okay so they probably won’t win any beauty contest awards (Sorry Paul Hollywood!) but they’re still AMAZING.

Time for a taste test. Looks like Cobalt likes them! Yummmmm….

I really like making puff pastry dough (minus adding the butter to the Hollywood recipe, which made me infuriated). There’s something so relaxing about rolling out and folding this dough. Especially with the Hollywood recipe because it smelled so good. :D

I’m definitely going to have to try this one again. I have to figure out how to perfect that butter part! Also maybe I should mix up the recipe a little. Maybe make some pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants)? Yes please!

I hope you all are enjoying the new lunar year! Year of the Dog! Did anyone make/eat dumplings? :)

Loafing about

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Hi everyone, how’s it going? I’m still pretty upset from all the craziness with the fires in and around my hometown last week. But today we are going to talk about bread.

Cobalt and I have been enjoying fresh bread from a local bakery. But then our friend K gave us a jar of sourdough starter and a recipe so we could try it ourselves. So on Friday night, we rolled up our sleeves and started the process. It’s long. Most of the steps aren’t really time consuming — just add some flour here or some water there — but there is a very specific order to things… and there are a lot of six-hour wait times. Also, there are a lot of steps where you only keep a little bit of the dough/starter and toss everything else, which Cobalt and I found wasteful. Oh well. Let’s get to the details!

Anyway, so on Friday night before we went to bread bed, we fed the starter. Turns out it eats flour and water, which is good because I don’t know if I could afford to feed a starter that liked steak or sushi. We got up on Saturday morning and took a little bit of that fed starter and fed it again. Same diet. Then on Saturday afternoon, we mixed some of that starter with more flour and water plus yeast and salt to make the actual bread dough. On Saturday night, we split the dough in half and set up an experiment. One loaf got to proof at room temperature and the second loaf got to proof in the fridge.

On Sunday morning, the room-temp loaf was huge. Waaaaay overproofed. We spent the morning quoting Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood from The Great British Baking Show. But we baked it anyway. And it didn’t turn out too bad (Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would say otherwise, I’m sure ;)). It still looked and tasted amazing, which is what really counts. Plus it crackled as it cooled, which we found heartwarming. It reminded Cobalt of a line from the movie Ratatouille: how the sound of the crust will tell you how good a bread is going to be.

It was a bit flat but still delicious. :D

Tarantula was very curious about our baking. We’re starting to wonder if it’s the smell of yeast. She was intrigued as we set up the overproofed bread Sunday morning and even more intrigued during its photoshoot an hour later. Crazy cat. You’re supposed to be a carnivore!

Endlessly curious…

The fridge-proofed loaf turned out much better. We baked it on Sunday afternoon and it just looks lovely.

Yay bread! We saved some of our starter so we’ll definitely have to make more soon. Maybe even next week? What fun recipes should we try next? So many options…

The great Spokane ramen-off!

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Hellooooo everyone! I hope you are all doing well, especially people affected by Harvey, Irma, or fires. You are all in my thoughts right now. Tell me how I can help!

Today’s post is about ramen. First of all, I love noodles in almost every form but I have an ridiculous amount of affection for noodles in broth, like udon or ramen. Then Cobalt and I watched Tampopo, a Japanese western movie about ramen (yes you read that right), and now we are on a mission to eat as much ramen as possible.

We even made our own ramen to eat while we watched Tampopo! It was okay. We still have much to learn….

Moving on!

So the other weekend, when we were driving to Glacier National Park, we had to drive through Spokane, Washington. It was around lunch time when we hit the city so we decided to stop and grab some food. Two ramen places popped up on Yelp: NUDO Ramen House and King of Ramen. Who knew Spokane had such tasty ramen options? Because we were going to drive back through Spokane in a few days later, we decided to try one ramen place on the way there and the other ramen place on the way back. Then we could compare the two places and I could practice my on-the-go (read: with an iPhone, not a DSLR) food photography.

Conclusion: Though both places were pretty delicious, it appears that King of Ramen really is King, at least with this current dataset (once a scientist, always a scientist).

The breakdown:

We started with King of Ramen (photo up there!).
This one felt more like an authentic ramen shop. It had all these small pots for the noodles in the kitchen, which was separated from the restaurant with cute curtains and a bar. They had a variety of tasty ramen and curry options on the menu. Cobalt ended up ordering something spicy while I went with the vegetarian option. We also got some fried tofu and I got an iced green tea. The tofu was fried to perfection: crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. It was tasty on its own or as an addition to our ramen. Also my tea was yummy too. But the ramen itself felt like something was lacking in the broth and/or my soup was missing a key ingredient. Not sure what though. We’ll have to come back and try it again!

Oh and also we have to go back so I can try the curry because I love Japanese curry.

On the way back, we stopped at NUDO.

If you’re wondering why the colors of this photo are a little more dull than the King of Ramen photo, it’s because it was 110% more smoky outside when we came back through Spokane. Booooo fires… :(

This restaurant is definitely more “hipster-y.” It had ramen-themed pop art on the walls and it just had a cool, sleek interior that seemed to be catering to the millennial crowd (as a millennial, I think I’m allowed to say this). Even the bathrooms were fancy – they had weird sinks.

Okay okay the ramen, Potassium, the ramen. So this time we both ordered a beef ramen and also got spring rolls. The beef ramen was good – the meat was tender and the broth was really flavorful. Plus I liked the bok choy in my soup! The noodles weren’t as good as King of Ramen’s noodles. And there was no egg in my ramen, which was sad because eggs in ramen are the best.

NUDO had one other problem: our waitress pretty much completely ignored us. Not like I need to be entertained by my waitstaff, but it’s nice when someone refills your water. Or at least brings you a carafe so you can refill your own water. I just wanted water! Plus she was so engrossed in a conversation with the only other patrons of the restaurant, that she didn’t even bring us our check. Some other server had to bring it to us. And then he asked us if we wanted to pay together or separate, which we thought was weird, considering it was only the two of us, and not a group. Is it weird? Discuss below.

One last thing. It was insanely smoky here last week (you can even tell that the light is off in that NUDO picture). The smoke was so thick that it felt more like we were eating the air instead of just breathing it in. Not great. But it’s cleared up a little and I even managed to catch a pic of Sunday night’s sunset. I’ll end this post with that.

It’s Taco Tuesday!

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Happy Taco Tuesday, everyone!

Today I am sharing pictures of chorizo tacos that Cobalt and I made last week. Yum. It’s beef chorizo too, which makes me happy because I generally don’t eat pork.

Anyway, let’s talk about about tacos. I love them. I think they might be one of my favorite foods. They’re so versatile! You can pretty much put whatever you want in there. Add some form of protein + tomatoes, onions, and avocados and you are good to go.

For these tacos, we also added green chile because it’s green chile season in New Mexico right now. Apparently there are enough New Mexicans in this part of Washington to ensure that we get our own stash of green chile up here too.

These tacos also feature Cherokee purple tomatoes from our local farmer’s market. Yummmm…

I also picked out tiny corn tortillas. I liked the idea of having miniature chorizo tacos that fit snugly into your hand. I always overstuff my tacos (as you can see here) so they weren’t really bite-sized. Maybe more along the lines of three-bite sized. But still, they were fun to eat. And I was pretty full after this plate.

Let’s add some cheese to these guys…

Thank you Cobalt for being the cheese shaker. I was pretty hangry by the time I was taking the cheese pictures so it probably wasn’t easy to help me…

Speaking of green chile, this weekend we bought a box of freshly roasted chiles and brought them home to peel and freeze. We’re set for the year now… or at least for the next few months.

That’s all for today. Short and sweet. I couldn’t write any more because I got hungry looking at my pictures. Your turn now: what is your favorite taco ingredient? Or if you have a taco speciality, what is it? Let’s talk about food!

Inspired by food

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Helloooo everyone! Long time no talk. We have a bunch to catch up on but today I want to talk about food.

So last week my friend Jem and I met up in Minneapolis to attend a food photography workshop by Lindsay from Pinch of Yum. I’d been following Lindsay for a while and I secretly wanted to attend one of her workshops but I never had the time. This time though, Jem and I jumped on an opportunity to go as “buddies” where we shared a table and set up. We were both pretty nervous since we are trained scientists/science communicators and not professional food bloggers (yet…). But it turned out to be so much fun. Now I am feeling inspired to work on my photography skills again, which is awesome because that’s why I made this blog all those years ago.

Come on, Potassium, enough chatter. Let’s talk about food:

First up: All the food was real. We ate almost everything after we photographed it and it was all delicious. Yum.

Now onto learning how to photograph food! So in addition to Jem and me, there were 11 other women at the workshop. Lindsay organized the workshop into 4 sessions over two days. The first session was a quick how-to lesson for DSLRs and then we got to practice shooting fresh fruits and veggies. Yum. Jem and I chose some radishes and I quickly became obsessed with their tangly roots.

This one made it to Twitter and Instagram but I like it so I’m posting it here too. So red…

In the second session, we learned about lighting. I think this session was super helpful for me because I never really think about lighting and camera angles when I’m shooting, other than “OK. The sun making weird shadows on my subject. I should maybe move.” Or “Crap, I’m photographing people in a lab and there’s absolutely no natural lighting going on here…. uhhh…” After this session, we practiced with tasty cobbler and melty ice cream. Then after our practice, we got to eat our creations. :D

The next day, we practiced our lighting skills again with some tasty breakfast (which also subsequently got eaten). My breakfast is featured at the top of this post.

After breakfast, we started our next session: composition. I loved this session because I think I learned something about myself here: There is no one “perfect” way to compose a photograph. It’s an entirely creative process. You pick what works best for your personal style and the message you want to send or story you want to tell. It may seem simple and/or kind of duh but it was magic for me. I feel like I get frustrated with photography and other creative endeavors (writing, etc.) because my stuff doesn’t match whatever weird standard I think it should match. But now I think that it doesn’t have to. The only thing that matters is that it looks the way I want it to and that it matches me, my personality, and my message (which is usually one of making things accessible in case you haven’t figured that out). MIND. BLOWN.

Anyway, as I was processing that new information, we got to practice our composition with pancakes and a billion possible toppings. Jem and I were really interested in getting motion into our pictures: showing syrup running down the side of the stack or toasted coconut flakes snowing down from above. It was definitely more challenging than we thought it would be but that’s okay. There’s plenty of time to practice. :)

Go syrup, go! Some of you may have seen this on Facebook or Instagram but it wanted to make an appearance on the blog as well.

The final session was to introduce us to Adobe Lightroom, which is one of the Adobe products I hadn’t played with yet. Omg. It is endlessly fun. It’s a different way of thinking about photos compared to Photoshop and it seems equally as powerful as Photoshop (but in different ways). Time for tons of photo playing.

So besides my mind-blowing revelation in the workshop, there were a few other things that stuck out to me that I’d like to mention here. At the beginning, Lindsay asked each of us to write down a few objectives for what we wanted to get out of the workshop. Then she checked in with us periodically to make sure we were hitting our objectives. This activity ensured that everyone had a personalized experience. Also, each session was taught with a small lecture, a demo, and then practice time so that everyone could have a chance to learn however she learned best. Finally, there were so many props for food staging and toppings to try. It was a great safe haven to let your creativity fly! I came home loving my DSLR again and ready to try to take more food pictures on my own.

Below is my first attempt: a matcha green tea latte in a mug that we got for our wedding (they were a set: this one is the Potassium mug and then we also have a blue Cobalt mug <3). I’ve been obsessed with learning how to make my own matcha lattes for the past few months and then this one was so pretty in the Potassium mug. I wanted to show it off. Enjoy!

Mmmm… matcha…

Whew. That concludes Potassium’s epic food photography workshop recap. Stay tuned. More photos coming your way soon (potentially even more food photos).

Now it’s your turn: what is something you have done recently that made you feel inspired and excited? Or what is something you’d like to do? Also it’s summer! Is it hot where you are? We’ve been melting in 100 degree weather up here in… Washington (state)? Yeah… we have a lot to catch up on, don’t we? Until next time!

Year of the Monkey!!!

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Hellooooo everyone! Today we are going to postpone this week’s science post because I was too busy to finish writing one Cobalt and I made dumplings for the year of the Monkey and I want to talk about those instead. Also apparently this is my 400th post so in celebration let’s talk about food!

I think one of the best ways to make new friends is to share a tasty meal together and talk about traditions. When Cobalt and I were in Germany last year, we met a girl who had participated in this crazy dinner activity where she and a few other random people that she didn’t know had to make dinner together. She said some people there only spoke German or English, but that was okay because most Germans know some English so they could still communicate pretty well. Then there was someone who didn’t speak English or German! Extra challenge! How are you supposed to communicate about recipes?! I guess it all worked out because their dinner sounded fantastic.

Anyway, weird-slightly-not-related anecdote aside, the point is that I like learning how to make new foods from different cultures. A few years ago, my friend T taught Cobalt and me how to make dumplings for the Chinese New Year. It was super fun and really tasty so we did it again the next year. This year T and her husband are in China with her family for Chinese New Year so Cobalt and I had to make our own dumplings.

It was pretty fun. We googled a bunch of recipes and sort of cobbled together our own version of the filling: including ground turkey, shrimp, and bok choy! Looking back on my dumping pictures from previous years I am thinking of other tasty things we could have added to the filling but I guess that means we will have to make them again soon! Anyway, during the folding of all the dumplings, I got inspired to take some artsy hand model pics so now you can see them! This part was made especially tricky because Tarantula was very interested in this meaty doughy stuff on the table and kept looking like she was going to try to get up there (humannnnnnssss I want that in my belleh!!!)!

First you put the filling in the wrapper… if you look closely you can see an almond. We put almonds in some of them to make them “lucky.” If you eat a lucky dumpling then hopefully your year will be great!
Then you fold the wrapper in half – taco style.
Cobalt took this one of me making the fancy ridges because I wanted to show off my sweet nails (nail wraps from Espionage Cosmetics)!

Once all the dumplings were folded, we tried steaming them instead of boiling them as we had done in the past. They turned out great! Then it was time to eat them…….

Cobalt! Stop eating my art! ;)

Now it’s your turn: Were you born in the year of the Monkey? What did you do last weekend? What’re you up to this weekend? Last weekend, Cobalt took me to see My Neighbor Totoro, which is my favorite movie evarrrrr, in the theater. It was amazing to see everything so big and I enjoyed having a closer look at all the beautiful backgrounds, which look like watercolor. I am so excited about this weekend because Cobalt and I are going to hang out with one of my blog friends! We finally get to meet in person! Excitement….

Stay tuned for that science post, y’all. It’s still on its way. :D

Mmmmm macarons…

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A few weeks ago, our lab made cookies for our floor’s cookie hour. I decided to attempt to make macarons which are a delicious cookie I discovered when I was in France (note: because they are made with ground almonds, egg whites, and powdered sugar, they are gluten free! Yum!). A few weeks before cookie hour, I found a recipe book for macarons so I flipped through the book and decided to attempt chocolate macarons and raspberry macarons. The weekend before cookie hour, I made a test batch of the chocolate ones. My first attempt made for some crunchy macarons…

I think that I overcooked the shells a little. Also it turns out that recipe has you add a lot of coccoa powder to the shells and I think that crushes the fluffiness of the egg whites that make up the shell.

Fast forward to the day before cookie hour – Potassium running around the kitchen covered in chocolate and raspberries. The raspberry shells turned out really pretty and much fluffier than the chocolate shells. Look at them!!!

Anyway, I was so excited for these shells that I might not have let them cool enough. They were so fluffy that they were really fragile and I had a lot of trouble getting them off the parchment paper. On the other hand, the raspberry jam I made for the inside turned out great! :) My second attempt at the chocolate turned out really well I think, though I can’t tell you for sure because they were gone before I had a chance to try them… oh well… I guess that means I should make another batch!

Next thing to try: maybe alter ground almond to egg white ratio. I still want fluffy shells but maybe slightly more ground almond would help them not be as fragile. (heads off to the kitchen to try this out!)

Now it’s your turn. What have you been up to while I’ve been slaving away in lab? Maybe one day I’ll finally have a degree to show for all this work but for now, I need to go. There are cells and a microscope and a lot of data analysis that need my attention RIGHT NOW. :-/

Oh wait… I have more questions for you. What is something you have spent a lot of time perfecting? A delicious dessert? A tasty snack? Something totally unrelated to food?

Horses, plant homes, and more!

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This poor plant still isn’t doing so well but I really like this one flower…

Hey everyone! Looks like I’m sticking to this once a week on Wednesdays post schedule for a little bit. Life is crazy with trying to graduate and all…

A lot of stuff has been happening though so I’ll give you a mini update!

So first of all, two weeks ago, Cobalt and I made a plant home in our office! Look at those happy plantys!

Plants enjoying the last of a sunny day. Also pictured: a buffalo and Jörg the German sheep

Second of all, it’s been snowing a lot…. Not a fan. But at least this picture is pretty.

I’ll admit it. When the snowflakes look like this, I am still a little mesmerized by them. Even when I am grumpy about having to clean off my car to go to work…

Finally, last weekend, we made dumplings with some of our friends for the Chinese New Year! :D This year I got to learn how to make the wrappers too. It was fun rolling them out into perfect circles. I also love folding the dumplings into these cool shapes. This year we put almonds into a few for good luck. Because four of us making/eating the dumplings are hoping to graduate from grad school this year, we decided that eating a dumpling with an almond in it meant that we would definitely graduate this year. We all got almond-filled dumplings so hopefully we will all graduate! :D

Happy year of the horse!

Anyway, in science news, yesterday I finished the last of my repeats for the first part of my project! So minus a few tweaks or running the assays I designed for other people’s experiments, that means I am done with the first part. Now I finally get to focus on the more nebulous and less thought out second part of my project! Things are coming along (even though they are slow)!

Your turn. Tell me about life. It’s February! Is the weather looking any better there because it’s cold and snowy here… Did you watch the Superbowl last weekend? Got any Valentine’s Day plans for next week? Let’s discuss! :D

Dinner with the president

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This is the scene where something amazing happened! Let me tell you about it…

What do you do when someone seemingly out of the blue does something really nice for you? Are you like me and you spend the next few minutes hours days months going over the situation piece by piece and wondering what exactly you did that convinced that person that you were worth it? Do you just say Thank you and go about your day? Is it something in between? It’s always so amazing to me when something awesome happens to me and it makes me kind of sad that it surprises me…

Anyway, maybe I should go about telling you what happened and then we can revisit this topic afterwards.

So this particular instance happened in France (though another one just happened to me this week and it is currently consuming all my thoughts with amazed wonder about what I did to deserve it… :-/). To get to the instance, you need a little back story. So I have this friend F. I met her last year when she was doing her post doc here in Boulder but now she has a fancy industry job in her home country of France. A few weeks before I went to Paris, we got to talking about whether she would be around while I was there and it turned out she would only be around for my very first day. It turned out to be really awesome to hang out with her then because I was totally culture shocked/jetlagged/tired from talking about my project with my boss by the end of that first day. We met up at the institute where I was working and it was so great to see a familiar face (I guess besides my boss…). She took me on a mini walking tour of that area of Paris and then took me up the Montparnasse Tower, which is HUGE and has this crazy fast elevator that takes you to the top. At the top we got to pose for a cute picture (they green screened in Paris behind us) and now I am sad we didn’t buy it (even though they wanted a lot of money for it). ANYWAY. At the top of the tower, you can see ALL OF PARIS. It was a great thing to do on my first day because I could see everything I had only heard about or seen on maps previously. Sooooo cool!

I tried to take a panorama from the top of the tower! Look at that Eiffel Tower dwarfing all the other buildings around it!
F and a jetlagged Potassium at the top of the tower with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

After we got down from the tower (elevators were not so fun going back down… there was much ear popping), we walked to a restaurant to get crêpes. They were kind of amazing. Like the best crêpes I had ever had. F told me that they are specific to the part of France called Bretagne (or Brittany for us English speakers) and she ordered their cider for me to try. It was AMAZING and totally ruined any cider I could ever have here… Anyway, it was a really great day and I am so happy I got to see F.

Fast forward to a week later when Cobalt arrived, I suggested we go to crêpes for dinner. We headed towards the Montparnasse tower and then I dragged Cobalt up and down a few streets trying to find the restaurant F and I had gone to. We got there and, after a brief awkward/hilarious incident of Cobalt and me being confused about whether people were standing outside in the rain because they wanted to or if they were waiting for a table, we were seated next to this other group of people (two men and a woman), who just got their food when Cobalt and I sat down. I oooo’d and awww’d over their crêpes and then ordered some cider for us (IN FRENCH… awww yeah… thanks F for telling me what kind to order!). Sometime after our food arrived, one of the guys turned to us and asked where we were from. I said Colorado and then Boulder so they asked if I knew about/went to the school here. I said yes I am a graduate student! They asked where I did my undergrad and I said University of Puget Sound, which not very many people have heard about but the guy was like “Oh yeah! We’re from Seattle! UPS is a great school!” The guy who asked me the first question went on to ask me what I was studying and I told them I was getting my PhD in biochemistry. He said he had an honorary PhD but that his wife had an actual PhD. She lamented that his honorary PhD diploma was bigger than her actual PhD diploma… Shucks… At this point Cobalt and I were curious about who these people were since they don’t just give anyone an honorary doctorate…

So let’s see… Seattle… famous enough to get an honorary doctorate…

Then they asked what Cobalt was up to and he said that he managed a coffee shop on campus. The guy smiled and said “Oh I know all about that… I used to be the president of Starbucks…” and then he and Cobalt had a nice discussion about selling coffee, working in the coffee industry, how Starbucks does in Europe (bad) compared to in Asia (great!), etc. Then we got off coffee and just talked about life in general. It was really neat! He and his wife (and it turns out the other guy was a cousin) have traveled all over the world and are planning on spending the next year exploring parts of the world for 3 months at a time. Cobalt and I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Then our check came and they took it and gave it to the waiter along with their check! The former president of Starbucks bought us dinner! And when we thanked him he said “I can tell you guys are going to do something amazing with your lives!” WOW!

Cobalt and I were kind of star struck about it afterwards and totally googled him when we got back to the flat. It was so cool to see this guy’s face pop up on my screen. :)

Okay so back to the main question. What do you do when that happens? How do you keep yourself from overanalyzing the situation and just be happy that it happened? Also, tell me something awesome like this that happened to you or that you wish would happen to you? Also, any comments about this very long winded post are greatly accepted. :D Any plans for the weekend? Cobalt and I have one: SLEEP. -_-

Dallas Day 4 – Street photography, Robots, and more!

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Hello and welcome to my last post about our Dallas trip. I’m warning you, this is going to be a long post (and very pic heavy) but hang in there! I think it’s a pretty awesome story! :)

All right so where to start. On Tuesday we left off at the aquarium. From there, we headed to this amazing deli called eatZi’s for lunch. It was amazing! It is like a bakery, deli, and wine market all in one place. It was pretty much the place to go for lunch – they had prewrapped foods like sushi, sandwiches, and salads; they had a sandwich and salad counter where you could request the ingredients and they’d make it in front of you; they had a bread counter and a deli counter; and on and on and on… I was so happy in there. I think I would probably go there every week if I lived in Dallas. We each got epic sandwiches (mmm prosciutto…) and other things to share before heading to Klyde Warren Park, which is a park over a freeway, to eat our lunch. It was a fantastic day outside and everyone was out enjoying the sun. After lunch, Jem and I took our cameras for a walk through the park to work on some street photography. Here’s a pic of us in action…

After Kylde Warren Park, Jem and I wandered around the nearby neighborhood and I decided to play with my zoom lens a little. That’s where that crazy picture of Cobalt comes from. How this works – I set the shutter speed to pretty slow (tenths of a second instead of hundredths of a second) and then as I was taking the picture, I would zoom the zoom lens out or back in, creating this awesome blur effect. I think it looked particularly cool with people and cars so that’s what I’m showing you today…

My first attempt at playing with the zoom lens:

Jem taking a picture of me.

I like this picture a lot.

They turned out pretty cool, don’t you think? I think my favorite is the one of Cobalt up there. He decided that it will be the album art for any music he ever puts out… Wahahaha…

After street photography, Jem and I dropped our cameras off at her house and then Cobalt, A, Jem, and I headed out of Dallas to see the town that Cobalt grew up in (before his family moved to New Mexico)! It was so cool seeing Cobalt’s old house in his old neighborhood. We also got to drive past his old elementary school and church. It was neat. After taking Cobalt down memory lane, we stopped at Krispy Kreme donuts before heading back to Dallas.

Jem, A, and Potassium being odd

Back in Dallas, Jem took us to see her work. It was exciting. I met Jem because we used to work in the same lab together back when she was a graduate student. But now she’s all fancy with her PhD and works in a new lab in Dallas. I always like seeing other people’s labs just because it’s so interesting to me how the same basic procedures get done in different labs (sometimes they are surprisingly different…).

We continued our tour of Dallas by heading to Deep Ellum to see The Traveling Man, a series of three robot sculptures that pop up kind of out of nowhere by this train track. They are super neat so here come a bunch of pictures… Ready?!

Each robot sculpture is surrounded by these little adorable bird sculptures…

Of course Cobalt wanted a picture of him riding one.

This one, called Waiting on a Train, was my favorite.

Jem and I were both sad that we’d left our big cameras at her house and had to resort to our iPhones for pictures. I immediately downloaded a fisheye app for mine because I thought the robots would look neat with a fisheye lens (don’t happen to own that for the DSLR anyway…).

Cobalt and I got photobombed by this Waiting on a Train guy… It was awkward… :-/

This is the second sculpture, called Walking Tall (We kind of saw these out of order, I think Walking Tall is technically the last sculpture in the series) through the fisheye iPhone lens… I love how it turned out. Also, notice that in addition to the bird sculpture the robot is holding, there’s a real bird perched on his shoulder…

Here’s me and the Walking Tall robot as viewed on this bird’s head. I tried to make it look like he was holding my hand. Weren’t the clouds amazing that afternoon?

Another angle of the Walking Tall robot… I like this pic a lot too.

Finally, the last sculpture (but I think technically the first sculpture) is called Awakening. Also, notice that cool art on the wall behind the robot.

The Traveling Man is a really cool and inspiring series of sculptures. They are really close to each other too so I highly recommend that you check them out if you live in the area or ever choose to visit. Next time we visit Jem, I am definitely going to go back to visit my robot friends.

At this point, everyone was getting a little grumpy because the donut high was wearing off and we all realized how hungry we were. So we headed to The Alligator Cafe for some cajun/creole food. Holy crap, this food was amazing. Everything that we got we loved. I had been craving fried catfish the whole time we were there so I got the Catfish Ponchartrain which was seriously soooo good that I am drooling right now just thinking about it. Yum. Highly recommend this place too!

AFTER DINNER (I know what you’re thinking… there’s more?! Seriously, I told you Day 4 was a long day… remember that on top of all this stuff we went to the aquarium too… don’t worry… we’re almost done.), we met up with some of Jem’s friends at a bar called The Ginger Man. It was nice to meet Jem’s friends and see a little bit of Dallas at night. Hurrah. Also, A and I decided to play around with the fisheye app on my phone and we got this gem of her…

In the morning we got up early and A, Cobalt, and I loaded up the car before driving allllllll the way back to CO. It was kind of a sad drive because we all really enjoyed our trip to Dallas and then we had to go home! Things got epically boring in Kansas and we brought out the license plate game to keep entertained. Turns out that a lot of people from all over the country drive through Kansas!

Okay folks, it’s time to end this epic post about our epic trip to Dallas. I hope you all enjoyed reading it. And now it’s your turn… What was your favorite part of our trip? Is there anything you wished you could have heard more about? What are you doing this weekend? Something fun I hope? Tell me! Jem is actually coming to Boulder this weekend to visit (yay!!!) and Cobalt, A, our friends J, K, another A, and I are all running in a 5K called the Rave Run. I am normally super grumpy about running (I just hate hearing my inability to breathe while running so I only like it when it is connected to soccer or some other sport…) but the Rave Run seems right up my alley. It’s at night so there are going to be flashing lights and colors and music and glowy things… I will probably just dance the whole way through… :)